


exist just for you

by autoheart



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Post-Finale, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 10:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoheart/pseuds/autoheart
Summary: So much has changed, but the way he feels is still the same. Only now, he knows he can't afford to stay quiet.(listen this is sugary sweet and dumb but i am in the middle of falling back into merlin hell and i need to do this)





	exist just for you

i. 

Merlin had been to afraid to leave the lake, and even more afraid when the lake began to leave him. He staked his claim to the land long before official deeds existed, and as time went on and the world grew up around him, maintained his claim, building a high stone wall around his property, and the large pond Lake Avalon had become. It was only about forty feet across, and six feet at its deepest point. He only hoped that as long as part of it existed, he would know from whence Arthur would return. He worried that if there were no lake, he wouldn’t recognize Arthur if he saw him in the street, as everyday,  Merlin’s memory of his face became a little hazier. It was bound to happen, he supposed, after eight hundred years.

As for the town, they knew the Emrys family had lived in that old house, on that land, for hundreds of years. No one questioned him, which was good and well with him, as he didn’t need them to know the Emrys family was just one man aging and deaging himself when he saw fit.

Merlin had begun to lose hope. For the first hundred years, he had been sure tomorrow would be the day. He had hoped against hope that, if not tomorrow, then the next day. Slowly, maybe tomorrow turned into maybe never. Merlin hated himself for it, for losing faith in his king, in the prophecy. Magic had slowly dwindled away, as the dragons had, and the trolls, and the spirits. So little of the world he had called home, that Arthur had called home, remained. And sometimes he wondered if this world was not the world that would need Arthur Pendragon to return, if the prophecy had been wrong, or the path the Earth was on had  changed.

 

Yet, every day, he woke up, and he lived on, and that should be evidence enough. For why would he continue to live on, waiting, if Arthur wasn’t coming back?

  
ii. 

He awoke underwater. It was strange, he thought, because there was no burning in his lungs, and he felt no hurry to break the surface. He began to move, his head surfacing more quickly than he expected, and as he breached the surface, he saw he was in a large pond. All the better, he supposed, looking down at himself to see he was in full armor, and carried his sword, which made swimming all the more difficult. He took a deep breath and was struck with how foreign the air felt to his nose. As he approached the edge of the pond, he noticed he was in a yard of sorts. In the moonlight, he could see a stone wall about a head taller than he was, and on the opposite side of the yard, a house. Maybe, he thought, it was the way the moonlight hit it, but he had never seen a house like it before in his life. The lines of it were all too straight, and it was not made of wood or stone, but something else he was not familiar with. He began walking towards it.

There was a lamp, of what sort he was not sure, as it did not appear to be fire, and under the lamp hung a sign. The sign read “Merlin Emrys.” He felt a wave of relief wash over him. Merlin!

He hurried towards the building, and as he approached, he noticed smaller lettering beneath Merlin’s name.

“Arthur, if you are reading this, there is a key hidden in the rock by the door.”

This made him pause. A key inside a rock?

He shook his head. Perhaps he was dreaming.

He found the rock Merlin had referred to, finding it wasn’t made of stone at all, but some thin, hard material he was not familiar with. When he turned it over, he found a small latch which opened the bottom of the rock. As Merlin said, there was a small, strange key tucked inside. He plucked it out and returned the rock to its former spot.

The doorknob was just as strange as the key. He decided he _must_ be dreaming, but the key slipped easily enough inside and the door opened.

 

He closed the door quietly behind him. In his armor, he felt to wide for the hallway he found himself in. He stood, listening, for a few moments. From the second door on his right side, he heard the not-quite-snore he had heard on so many hunting trips and his heart leapt. He found himself, wondering, then, how long it had been since he had seen Merlin, if this was indeed Merlin’s house, because he had no memory of Merlin leaving Camelot, let alone getting a house of his own.

He hurried down the hallway, careful not to let his sword scrape the walls of the narrow hallway.

“Mer-”he began, in a hushed voice, but upon seeing the man in the bed, he felt as though all the air had been knocked out of him. “Lin,” he breathed, the rest of Merlin’s name leaving his mouth almost involuntarily.

 

He took a step into the room, his armor clanking, but Merlin did not stir.

“Merlin,” he repeated, the word barely even a noise now.

Seeing Merlin made him sure, this was not a dream. Merlin looked as he always had in sleep, peaceful, if not a bit of a noisy breather, but the simple sight of his face brought a flood of memories back to Arthur’s mind.

 

Merlin, a sorcerer.

Merlin, holding him.

_Stay with me._

Wanting to say, _I will, Merlin, of course, I will._

Merlin’s face inches, no, centimeters from his own, wishing he had always been that close, why had he never been that close?

 

He felt the strength sap from his legs but did not realize he was falling until his sword clattered to the floor.

“Merlin,” he murmured again, as his vision began to fade. “Merlin!”

 

iii.

 

Arthur first became aware that he was no longer lying on a hard surface. He then became aware of the sound of leather ties being undone, and finally, that his armor was being removed quite carefully. It was a familiar pattern. Every other squire he’d had had started at his hands, then moved to his helmet, then worked from his feet up. With Merlin, it was always helmet first, then at a rate that was almost painfully slow, moving up from his feet and ending with the chest plate. No one had ever taught him otherwise, and Arthur couldn’t bring himself to correct him. He had grown affectionate towards the meticulous way Merlin moved his hands, the concentration that lined his face, the way Merlin’s fingers brushed against him as he worked. Merlin had never been afraid to touch him, as so many had been, afraid to dirty his royal body with their commonness. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull Merlin into a hug and keep him there. He restrained himself.

“Merlin,” he said without opening his eyes.

“Yes, Sire?” he heard a familiar voice reply, although it had a strange lilt.

“How long?”

“You remember?”

“Yes,” Arthur’s throat tightened at the memory.

“What all do you-”

“All of it, _Mer_ lin,” he added firmly, Merlin’s face, his proximity, flashing back through his mind. “How long have I been…” he trailed off.

“A little bit over eight centuries,” Merlin replied. “Sit up so I can get this chest plate off. Slowly, though. You hit your head.”

“Eight?” Arthur stuttered, opening his eyes and shooting up in the bed.

“I said slowly,” Merlin chastised, working at the leather buckles on the chest plate.

“I feel fine,” he argued, and Merlin simply nodded.

Arthur looked down at Merlin, who was concentrating on undoing his armor as though it were surgery, with more focus than any other servant he had ever had. But then again, Merlin wasn’t like any other servant in many ways.

“You waited,” Arthur said, his eyes locked on Merlin’s face.

Merlin’s eyes failed to meet his.

“Not by choice,” Merlin answered. “While you were busy being dead, I was stuck being immortal.”

“But you were right here. You could have been anywhere. That pond, is it Avalon?”

“What’s left of it,” Merlin nodded. Now that the last of Arthur’s armor was off, he was focused on arranging it carefully at the foot of the bed.

“Have you stayed here by it the whole time?” Arthur asked. He willed Merlin to look at him, but he would not.

“More or less,” Merlin answered.

“Oh, where else did you go?”

“Sometimes, I would go into the town a few miles up the road,” Merlin said, matter-of-factly.

“So you’re telling me you have eight centuries to travel the world a hundred times over, and you sat here at Lake Avalon,” Arthur asked, a smile playing on  his lips.

“I was scared,” Merlin said quietly.

“Of what?”

“That you would come back and I wouldn’t be here,” he replied, holding Arthur’s red cape, drenched and folded in his lap. He ran his finger over the golden lion sewn onto the shoulder.

“Who says I would even want to see _you_?” Arthur teased.

Finally, Merlin’s eyes met with Arthur’s face, studying it with an intensity Arthur had never been subject to before. When their eyes finally made contact, Arthur felt a familiar wince in his chest, only a hundred fold stronger than he was used to. For a moment, tears threatened to stream down his cheeks at the genuine fear he saw there, but he blinked them back. Merlin thought… He could only imagine Merlin thought he meant he wouldn’t see him because of his magic, but he had only been teasing as they always had.  

Merlin smiled slowly, looking back down at the armor in front of him.

“Of course you do,” he said, his voice falling into a worn cadence, teasing Arthur. “Why else would your first dozen words be ‘Merlin.’ Merlin, Merlin, Merlin,” he imitated breathily.

“At least I wasn’t dumb enough to have a sign where anyone can read it saying where the key to my house was hidden,” Arthur retorted, feeling a blush rise to his cheeks.

“No one can read that lettering anymore, Arthur. They call it Old English. In fact, if anyone heard us speaking right now, they wouldn’t even think we were speaking English. I’m surprised I even remember it so well. It’s been so long,” Merlin explained.

“Speak how they do now,” he urged Merlin.

Merlin said something, and he recognized his own name, but nothing else. He found the lilt in Merlin’s speech fit much better with these words, from what he could tell.

“What did you say?”

“I said you were the biggest prat I’ve ever met.”

“Shut up,” Arthur smiled, kicking his foot out towards Merlin.

Merlin caught Arthur’s  foot before it could make contact with his head. He wrinkled his nose at Arthur.

“You smell like bog water,” Merlin commented.

“Seeing as I’ve been in a bleeding lake for nearly a millennia, I am somewhat less than surprised,” Arthur retorted, noting how easy this was. Of course it was easy, he felt as though he has just woken up from a long nap. He didn’t feel that eight hundred year space of time he spent without Merlin, and he wondered if Merlin was struck with the same feeling of ease at their interaction. Speaking to Merlin had always been as easy as breathing for him. He had always hoped- and suspected- that Merlin felt the same way.

 

“I’ll draw you a bath,” Merlin said, dropping Arthur’s foot and making to stand up. He went to the wall and pressed a flat rectangle fixed there.

A light on the ceiling appeared

“Was that-” Arthur began, flinching back from the light and looking at Merlin.

“Not magic, Arthur. It’s called electricity, and it’s really too complicated to explain at,” he looked at a small metal rectangle he pulled from his pocket and continued, “three in the morning. Let’s just say everyone in England- I mean Albion, has it. Most people on the planet do at this point. Can’t say the same for magic,” he trailed off.

“What do you mean? Magic, gone? Yours, too? And Albion? Camelot?” he asked, in a bit of a panic.

“You know, everytime I think I know how to explain something to you, the world moves on. My magic isn’t gone, and it’s my feeling that it isn’t gone from the world entirely. Just diluted. There’s so many people in the world now, Arthur, there’s no one who is even a eighth magical. Albion is still here, we just call it England now. As for Camelot.. Gwen did a god job, without you-”

“With your help?” Arthur interjected.

“Of course, with my help, she was my best friend,” Merlin replied, a slight edge to his voice. “But after Gwen… there were kingdoms stronger than ours, Arthur. Eventually, all the kingdoms of Albion were under the control of one king, and it became England.”

“Will I have to fight him?” Arthur asked, trying to push the idea of Camelot, his home, crumbling away to nothing.

“It’s a queen now, Elizabeth II, and I should hope not, she’s in her nineties. Would hardly be a fair fight,” Merlin smiled. “Can I explain the rest of this to you when you don’t smell of bog weed?”

“I suppose. Will you need to go out to the pump to get some water? I could help,” Arthur said, standing up from the bed hurriedly.

“Arthur Pendragon? Offering to help me get his bathwater? You must be an imposter,” Merlin laughed at him. “No, we don’t use wells or pumps anymore for the most part. At least not in Eng-Albion,” Merlin corrected himself.

“Then what do you do?” Arthur asked. His brain hurt and he felt rather childish for not knowing.

“Can you just shut up and I’ll show you?” Merlin asked.

 

He began to leave the bedchamber through a different door than the one Arthur came through. Arthur stayed put, waiting for him bring the tub back.

“Arthur?” Merlin asked, popping his head back into the room.  

“Yes?” Arthur replied absently, thinking about how Merlin was never scared to call him by his first name. Not that he minded sire, and my lord, but it got tiring after a while. He liked that with Merlin, he could just be Arthur.

“Are you coming?”

“Oh, was I supposed to?”

“Yes, Arthur,” Merlin chuckled.

 

Arthur followed Merlin through the door, which lead to a smaller room. The walls were white, as was most everything else in it. There was a strange chair that looked at though it opened, a tub which attached to the ground, what looked like the spout of a pump with two knobs, and then at the top of the all above the tub, there was another fixture that he couldn’t entirely identify.

 

“This is the bathroom,” Merlin began explaining, seeing the way Arthur’s forehead had wrinkled in confusion. “This is what we use instead of chamber pots now,” he continued, opening the lid. “You.. go.. Here and then when you’re done, you push this,” he pushed  a silver lever, and the water in the chamber pot began to move, until it eventually emptied down the hole at the bottom and began refilling.

“This is the bath,” Merlin moved on, “and the water comes out here. This knob is for hot water, and this knob is for cold water.”

Merlin turned the knob, and water began pouring out with incredible force.

“Surely, this is magic,” Arthur shook his head. “Where is the water coming from?”

“Pipes in the ground, Arthur,” Merlin smiled, and Arthur could tell he was trying not to laugh.

“And that?” Arthur motioned to the thing on the wall.

“Oh, that’s a shower,” he said, pulling a little stick on the tub spout. The water coming out into the tub stopped, and water began to spray from the fixture on the wall. “You stand instead of sit. Some people feel like it gets you cleaner.”

“Does it?” Arthur asked.

“Well, you aren’t sitting in your own dirty water for twenty minutes. But people are much more concerned with clean than they were back… you know when we were younger. Most people bathe every day,” he added.

“EVERY day?” Arthur sputtered.

“Yes,” Merlin nodded. “Now bath or shower?”

Arthur eyed the shower suspiciously, finally deciding, “Bath.”

“This is shampoo, it’s soap for your hair. This is conditioner, it’s to-” Merlin stopped himself, looking up at Arthur, who was clearly overwhelmed. “Do you just want me to stay and help with the hair stuff?”

Many kings required their servants to help them bathe, farther than just fetching the water for them, and Arthur had never been one of them. He felt that he was fully capable to washing himself, and any other day, he would refuse. But the idea of being by himself for too long in this strange white room filled him with panic. So he nodded.

Merlin got the water running back through the lower faucet, checking the temperature as he did so, and then plugged the drain.

“You just… get in and call me when the tub is full, yeah?” Merlin said. “I just need to get you a towel.”

 

Merlin left the room quickly, leaving Arthur to undress. Merlin had seemed almost embarrassed at the whole situation, which seemed strange to Arthur. He had seen him in the bath at least a thousand times, if not more. He pushed it from his mind and got into the bath. The water level rose quickly, but Merlin returned before it threatened to overflow.

“Sorry,” Merlin huffed. “I was getting you some clean clothes.”

“I won’t fit into _your_ clothes, Merlin,” Arthur said, appraising Merlin’s shoulders, much narrower than his own, as the other man shut off the water.

“They’re not my clothes,” Merlin said, moving back to the folded pile he had set on the counter. “I’ve kept clothes ready for you since the day you… Since that day. Got some new ones every ten years or so to fit the fashions.”

“Oh,” Arthur answered, more of a breath than a voluntary reaction. He felt strangely touched by the gesture. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Merlin said. “Now, let’s get your hair clean. I trust you can do the rest on your own.”

“Yes, I can, _Mer_ lin,” Arthur snipped back.

“How silly of me to ask, _sire_ ,” Merlin replied, that ghost of a smile back at his lips. “Lean your head back,” Merlin instructed as he nealed by the tub, patting the space in front of where he had settled.

“Close your eyes, as well. This stuff stings like hell if you get it in your eyes,” he warned, carefully spilling water from his hands over Arthur’s hair.

Arthur was about to say “Then take great care to keep it out of _mine, Mer_ lin,” but any words he had on the tip of his tongue immediately disappeared when Merlin’s began to work the shampoo through his hair.

He felt all the tension leave his body with Merlin’s touch, as though that was what he had been waiting for since the moment he regained consciousness. All of the fear and panic that had built up in the last twenty minutes felt as though it was being washed away by Merlin’s touch. He pressed back into Merlin’s hands, almost making a noise of protest when he pulled one away to pour water over him again, running one hand through his hair to make sure nothing was missed.

He put something else in Arthur’s hair, conditioner he had called it.

“This needs to set a minute or two,” he murmured, rinsing his hands in the water.

As he took his hands from the water, Arthur took hold of Merlin’s left with his right.  He wasn’t sure why he had done it, only that he couldn’t stop himself. He brought their joined hands to rest on his chest, feeling Merlin tense momentarily. He wondered what his face looked like. Merlin untensed. Arthur opened his eyes for a moment and turned over his shoulder to see Merlin, resting his chin on the edge of the tub, looking back at him.

He closed his eyes and turned to face forward again.

“Why did you wait, Merlin?”

“You know why. I’ve told you a hundred times, I was born to serve you, it was my dest-”

“But while I wasn’t here you didn’t have to sit here, you could have done anything,” Arthur interjected.

Merlin’s grasp on his hand loosened.

“I never quite figured out how to go on without you,” he whispered, after what felt like an hour. “It felt like half of me was missing. I tried, Arthur, I did.” Merlin chuckled. “I knew that you would hate me just sitting around, but the idea of you coming back and me not being here when you did, and you having no way of finding me- nothing has ever scared me more.”

“I wouldn’t have held it against you,” Arthur said, his voice quieter than he had

meant it to be.

“I would have.”

They were quiet again, and Merlin began to rinse his hair out for the second time. When Arthur couldn’t bear the silence anymore, he spoke again.

“Merlin, this goes beyond loyalty to Camelot, to me. This is more than anyone would have ever expected from you. Why?”

“Arthur. It was never a question of loyalty. I never did anything out of loyalty, and nothing I did was for _Camelot,”_ Merlin replied, and Arthur could hear him stand up and begin to walk away from him.

“Then what did you do it for?” Arthur opened his eyes to see Merlin standing in the doorway, already halfway out of the room.

“Don’t you know? You, Arthur. Everything I have ever done was and always will be just for you,” Merlin said. “Call me when you’re done,” he added quietly before closing the door behind him.

 

Arthur wiped at his face, ensuring himself the moisture he felt there was just bathwater.

  
iv. 

Arthur didn’t call for Merlin when he was done. He dried himself and got dressed in the clothes Merlin had left for him, small clothes, a shirt with short sleeves and pants of a rather soft material with a tie around the waist. He dried his head with the towel and let it drop to the floor.

He stood and looked in the mirror. He looked as he always had, the shirt a little tighter than anything he had worn before, he supposed, but other than the clothes, he looked just like the man that had died all those hundreds of years ago. And Merlin.. He still looked just like Merlin. His hair was maybe a little longer than he used to wear it, and his neckerchief was gone, but his ears still stuck out all funny and cheekbones were still sharper than any Arthur had ever seen.

He let out a shaky breath. He had known, he supposed. He had known from the moment he saw Merlin that he was different. A lot of the time he spent with Merlin felt like some strange competition to see which one of them could die for the other, who could sacrifice more for the other, and he supposed he knew why he had done that, too. But only when he felt the life draining out of his body did he know the name for how he felt.

 

And Merlin appeared not to know. Or at least not to know he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t doing everything he did for Camelot. Not by a long shot.

 

He braced himself, knowing once he opened the door he might say something that he would regret.

 

He opened the door to find Merlin standing just on the other side, looking surprised.

“I could have helped you dress, si-”

“ _Mer_ lin,” Arthur said. He had meant to say something. He really had. But he was met again with the overwhelming urge to hug Merlin, and this time he gave in.

Merlin gasped as Arthur pulled him closer to him, one hand at the back of his neck, one around his waist. He turned his head, burying his nose in Merlin’s hair, and squeezed him tighter.

Merlin seemed to hesitate before he wrapped his arms around Arthur, hugging him with surprising strength.

“Thank you, Merlin,” Arthur murmured against Merlin’s ear. “For everything.”

Merlin took a shaky breath, and Arthur realized the other man was crying.  Arthur pulled away, bringing his hand to Merlin’s cheek, wiping a tear away with his thumb.

“Everything,” he began cautiously. “Everything I did for Camelot, I did to make you proud. As long as you were proud to call me king, I was happy. All of Camelot was yours, had you asked for it. I was your king before anyone else’s.”

“But you’ve always loved Camelot,” Merlin whispered.

“Yes, but if you had never come, I would have never been fit to be its king. You made me want to be better for _you_ ,” Arthur continued.

“But-”

“Merlin, what I am trying to say, what I thought I made clear that night, was that all of it, it was all for you. I lived for you, Merlin. I still do. Why else would I want this ugly mug to be the last thing I laid eyes on for eight hundred years?” he chuckled, pinching at Merlin’s cheek.

Merlin smiled. “Shut up, you prat,”

“Is that anyway to speak to your king?”

 

They both seemed to realize at the same time just how long Arthur’s hand had been on Merlin’s cheek, Merlin’s hands resting at Arthur’s waist. In times past, they both would have pulled away now, as if having touched fire, but now, he couldn’t bring himself to take his hand away. Instead, he closed the space between them, pressing their lips together softly.

Merlin’s hands found Arthur’s hair, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss.

Arthur pulled away for breath, pressing his forehead to Merlin’s.

“I thought I lost you,” Merlin’s breath ghosted over his lips.

“Never,” Arthur smiled.

“Stay with me?” Merlin asked.

“Of course,” Arthur replied, kissing Merlin again.

 

As far as he was concerned, this was why he was here. Albion, England, whatever it was now, could wait. He was going to let himself have this.


End file.
